Джек Макдевитт - Cryptic - The Best Short Fiction of Jack McDevitt

The hole collapsed.

“Here we go.” Mac gave me a thumbs up. “This time we’ve got it right.” There was no smile now, just jaws set and steely eyes straight ahead.

Everything was bolted down. The lab had been cleared of all furniture and nonessentials. I wondered whether we hadn’t been lucky. What would have happened if the torus had opened in the depths of the ocean? Or under ten thousand feet of rock? “Mac,” I said, “maybe we shouldforget it.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I mean it. I get the feeling somebody’s trying to tell us something.”

McHugh pulled on his waistcoat and bent over a display. “Systems fully charged. We’re all set, Gillie. You want to do the honors?”

Reluctantly, I walked over to the TDI, looked at him, looked at the torus. Looked at the keyboard. It was a new computer. He was trying to be casual, but it only made him look more rattled.

I pushed the button.

This time we got ground-level summer. Green meadows stretched toward a nearby line of wooded hills. Goldenrod, thistles, and black-eyed susans covered the fields. Afternoon heat invaded the lab. The air conditioner kicked in with a thump.

“At last.” McHugh gazed through the hole. “Eighteen sixty-five.” For a long time he didn’t move. “Now, listen, Gillie: the nexus will close ten minutes after we go through. But it will open for ten minutes every twelve hours until someone shuts it down. Okay? Make sure you remember where we are. In case you have to find your own way back.”

Without another word he stepped through. His image flickered, as if in a heat wave. On the other side, he raised a fist in triumph and gazed around. “Come on, Gillie.” He produced a bottle and two glasses, filled them, and held one out for me.

I hesitated.

“It’s okay,” he said.

I stepped across. The air got warm. It was thick with the drowsy buzz of insects. I took the glass. “To you, Mac.”

McHugh loosened his tie. “To the Creator, who has given us a universe with such marvellous possibilities.”

The afternoon smelled vaguely of sulfur. I took my vest off. We stood in a valley on an open field enclosed by wooded ridges. The sky was hazy and dark. Nearby, a flag fluttered from a wooden gate. Occasional farm buildings were enclosed by fences and stone walls. I saw a wagon in one of the farmyards. A dirt road wandered through the center of the valley.

The buildings, the fields, the road, were all empty.

I fell in beside McHugh and we started to walk, in no particular direction. “Where is everybody?” I asked.

He ignored the question.

I mopped my brow. “It must be July or August. It’s certainly not April.”

He nodded, but he was satisfied to have arrived somewhere. Anywhere .

“It’s quiet,” he said.

The landscape was vaguely familiar. I had seen these ridges before.

Behind us, the torus hovered, McHugh’s computer-laden lab vivid against the rolling hills. “Maybe,” I said, “we should go back.”

He removed his jacket. “You go back if you want to, Gillie.” He fished his watch out of a pocket, looked at the sun, and shrugged. “Let’s make it three o’clock.” He set and wound the time piece.

I looked at the flag. It was the national colors, and I was trying to count stars when McHugh’s breathing changed. He was staring over my shoulder, back toward the torus, toward the line of hills behind it.

“What’s wrong, Mac?”

His lab still floated serenely in the afternoon.

“The woods,” he said. “Behind the nexus.”

Gray shadows moved among the trees. The sun struck metal.

My God. “What’s going on?” asked McHugh. “Where are we?”

A bugle call split the afternoon.

A line of men came out in oiled precision. Bayonets gleaming. And a second line. And a third. They wore gray uniforms.

Drums rolled. The troops wheeled smartly into line and started quickstep toward us.

Behind them, on the hilltops, a gun roared. Something screamed overhead. I watched it tear across the sky and explode on the opposite ridge. And I got a good look at the standards. “Son of a bitch, Mac. It’s the 24th Virginia.”

I watched them coming up behind the torus. They maintained drill order, accompanied by officers with drawn swords on horseback. They seemed unaware of the device, which I suspected was invisible from the rear. There were thousands of troops.

I was getting a bad feeling. “Over there,” I said. “The 7th Virginia. And up the line will be the 11th. My God.” I was overwhelmed by the majesty of it. “You’re right, Mac. We’re here . Son of a bitch.”

“Gillie, we’re where ?”

More missiles tore overhead. A long orchestrated crescendo shook the top of the ridge that had been hit a moment before. More projectiles raced in the opposite direction. “Down!” I screamed and threw myself on my belly and covered my head.

Moments later the ground erupted. Holes were blown in the ranks of the advancing men. Others hurried to fill the spaces. “This is Kemper’s Brigade,” I said. Mac was staring at me, not comprehending. “You’ve been dumped on again, Mac.” I was getting to my feet. “We’ve got to get away from here.”

The cannons were deafening. A gap was torn in the line of advancing troops, but they came on. Silent. Relentless. Into the jaws. Their generals didn’t understand yet that war had changed. That you could no longer charge fixed positions.

“Stay down,” screamed McHugh. “We’ll wait it out.”

“No. We can’t wait this one out. We’ve got to get back before the hole closes.”

“You’re crazy. You’ll get killed.”

“Mac, we won’t survive out here. You know what that is back there? It’s Seminary Ridge.”

McHugh was close to my ear but he had to shout anyway. “So what?”

“Pickett’s Charge. We’re in the middle of Pickett’s Charge.”

We got back moments before a cannonball roared into the lab, blew three walls apart, collapsed the front porch, and nailed Harvey Keating’s Toyota, which was parked in his driveway.

The equipment was in ruins again.

Nevertheless, McHugh was exultant. “You see? It does work.”

“Mac, you’ve made four attempts now. All four have been disasters.”

“But we’re learning . We’re getting better. You have to expect a few problems.” He looked at me for reassurance. “We know how to travel.”

“That’s what scares me.” I pointed at the wreckage. “What are the odds against accidentally arriving at the exact time and place of a major event?”

He shrugged. “Slim, I would think.”

“You’ve done it twice.”

I knew he wouldn’t quit, though. He bought more equipment and went back to work. “Making improvements,” he told me. A few weeks later he was ready to try again, and he issued another invitation. “I want to say hello to Custer.” I told him no thanks. He was disappointed in me.

But hell, I can take a hint.

So I wasn’t too surprised when his newspapers started piling up. I waited a couple of days before breaking in.

The house was empty.

In the lab, his equipment was intact. Except for the TDI: A stone-tipped feathered arrow jutted from its polished black surface. It had lodged right between the mode lamps.

Immortality?” I asked.

Armistead shook his head. “No. Not immortality. The child would not live forever. Nothing lives forever. He, or she, would be subject to accident, war, act of God, even a sufficiently unpredictable virus.” He looked at me across the vast expanse of his desk and refilled his coffee cup. “Are you sure you won’t have some, Catherine?”